SidAlpha
SidAlpha (born: ) is an American YouTuber who is best known for his commentary on the gaming industry, whose content also includes, reviews, and gaming news. Biography Having started his channel in May 2015, interest in SidAlpha's channel surged in February 2017 when Dentola Studios hit him with a bogus DMCA strike to silence his criticism of the studio's practise of taking sample games from the Unity Asset Store and uploading those unaltered sample games to Steam's Greenlight service, a story which was signal boosted when YouTubers such as Jim Sterling and TotalBiscuit took up the story. Alex Mauer DMCA controversy On June 23rd 2017 SidAlpha reported on a wave of YouTubers playing the game Starr Mazer DSP being hit with DMCA strikes by the game's composer Alex Mauer, rather than the game's developer Imagos Softworks. It soon became clear when these YouTubers filed a counter-claim that Mauer was attempting to use these YouTubers to aid her in their own battle with Imagos, who Mauer claimed had not paid the agreed fee for Mauer's work on the game's soundtrack and sound effects, and this was the basis for Mauer's copyright strikes as Mauer believed the best way to get Imagos to cave in would be to unleash a wave of angry YouTubers upon them. Mauer's plan unsurprisingly backfired, given the policy is for the YouTuber to seek out the person filing the claim rather than who the person filing the claim says they should seek out, which led to Mauer becoming abusive and telling those demanding the strikes be removed that "Fucking playing video games is NOT a job! If there was a way to DMCA punch you in the face through my computer screen I would." Within a couple of days of SidAlpha's initial video, the story was once again signal boosted by Jim Sterling and TotalBiscuit, even gaining coverage by The Know, while YouTuber (and copyright attorney) Leonard French took up Imagos' case against Mauer. Things went from bad to worse after this, with Mauer then beginning to file DMCA strikes against at least sixty channels and a similar number of Twitch channels, and soon Mauer's attention also turned to Let's Plays of other games featuring music they had composed such as Death Road to Canada and River City Ransom, while Mauer's behaviour became increasingly erratic, for example forwarding e-mails to SidAlpha for no apparent reason. As the story continued, Mauer began sending death threats to people, not least sending an e-mail to SidAlpha stating "I want to literally kill you" while in a further e-mail Mauer falsely accused SidAlpha of being transphobic and said "I want to kill myself but I have to kill you first [sic]". On July 6th 2017, Mauer was served with a court summons by Leonard French, which led to Mauer asking both French and SidAlpha for help - requests which were denied, with SidAlpha bluntly telling Mauer to get an attorney - which led to Mauer stating they would be representing themselves in court. On December 1st 2017, a settlement between Imagos and Mauer was signed which contained a non-disparagement agreement, preventing Mauer from talking about Imagos or using DMCA strikes against YouTubers or Twitch streamers playing Imagos games. Mauer responded to the settlement by insulting the judge via e-mail. Andrew Watt issues On June 17th 2017, SidAlpha posted a video reporting on how Andrew Watt, developer of the game Blood of Old - the Rise to Greatness, was belittling or even banning Steam users who gave the game negative reviews and even threatened one Steam user with a lawsuit. In response to this video, Watt abused YouTube's DMCA system to get the video taken down. Initially it seemed the situation had cooled after this, with the video being restored within 24 hours while Watt posted an apology to Steam to those he had banned or belittled, but the situation reared its head once more on November 3rd 2017 when Steam terminated Watt's account, which led to Watt threatening not just further DMCA strikes on SidAlpha's channel but also a defamation lawsuit in a course of action quite similar to Jim Sterling's issues with Digital Homicide. A few weeks later, on November 26th 2017, SidAlpha posted an update on the situation where he stated that Watt was trying to take down his channel via abuse of YouTube's privacy complaint system by claiming that SidAlpha was infringing on Watt's privacy by using his real name in videos - even though Watt was selling games on Steam under the name of Andrew Watt Gaming and was posting under the handle AndrewWatt96, making his name a matter of public record - and it appeared that Watt had enlisted the help of Alex Mauer to aid him with the harassment. More worryingly, Watt also set up a fake Twitter account that looked similar to SidAlpha's real Twitter, with posts that alternated between copy/pasting exactly what SidAlpha had posted on his account alongside tweets designed to fool the untrained observer that SidAlpha was posting hate speech - more worrying than this, though, was Watt threatening to use a bot program to set up large numbers of fake SidAlpha accounts in order to exploit Twitter's algorithms to have SidAlpha purged from Twitter as well as YouTube. Personal Life SidAlpha is unmarried, but has a daughter, who has appeared on his channel in MunchPak unboxing videos. Subscriber Milestones *50,000 Subscribers: July 6, 2017 *100,000 Subscribers: December 23, 2019 Category:Users that joined in 2007 Category:Male YouTubers Category:American YouTubers Category:Gaming YouTubers Category:Commentary YouTubers Category:YouTube Reviewers